


i will shield you from the waves

by zenstrike



Series: you’re lucky that’s what i like [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), Secret Relationship, keith developing into Protective Keith(tm), klance roommates, more or less, touch of anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 04:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15811695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: A month into their relationship, Keith and Lance stay up too late studying.





	i will shield you from the waves

**Author's Note:**

> takes place in between three and four of it’s just a matter of when and about a month after now go when you’re ready
> 
> once again it’s basically plotless

    “I had a fish,” Lance said and it startled Keith a bit because he had been sure—so sure—Lance had fallen asleep at his desk. Keith blinked at his laptop screen and realized he had been typing gibberish.

    Literal gibberish.

    “LADJFALKJD. D a … ; dlajl.”

    Keith frowned.

    He twisted to look towards Lance’s desk but Lance had migrated at some point and was sitting on the floor now and staring into Red’s cage. Red, blessed hamster that she was, was eating.

    “What?” Keith said and rubbed his eyes. He tapped at his backspace key until the gibberish disappeared.

    “I think you fell asleep,” Lance said, sounding pleased.

    “ _You_ fell asleep.”

    “You were still typing.”

    Yeah, Keith could see that. He closed his laptop and turned properly in his seat. Lance beamed up at him, looking all sunshine-y and handsome in the dim light of their room. Like it wasn’t after midnight and he wasn’t sitting on the floor and watching their illegal hamster.

    “What was that about a fish?”

    Lance leaned back on his hands. He hummed. “I had a fish when I was younger.”

    Keith waited. He blinked. “Yeah?” he prompted when Lance just—kept—looking at him.

    Lance’s smile turned a little sheepish. “Don’t laugh.”

    “Don’t laugh at what?”

    “I named it Blue.”

    “The fish?”

    “Yeah.”

    Keith opened his mouth. He closed it. He drummed his fingers against his desk. “Was Blue, perhaps, a _blue_ fish?”

    “I was a kid, okay!”

    Keith didn’t laugh, but he did smile. Lance huffed, then straightened and Keith watched him lift Red out of her cage. Her legs kicked until Lance settled her in his palm and then, like the fluffy monster she was, she settled.

    “What are you doing with her?”

    “I’m spending time with her!”

    “She was eating!”

    “She was done!”

    Lance dropped back into his desk chair and set Red down again. She was still for a moment and then started waddling across Lance’s open astro textbook.

    “You’re doing a really good job studying.”

    “Oh please.” Lance waved a hand at Keith without looking up. “I saw you typing gibberish.”

    “I’m tired,” Keith grumbled. “From working hard.” He stood and stretched with a grunt.

    “You should go to sleep,” Lance said. He leaned back in his seat and looked back at Keith. He was smiling something small and slightly soft and it was becoming increasingly familiar. When Keith saw it he wasn’t always sure if he should run to Lance or away from him.

    “ _You_ should go to sleep.” Keith stepped closer and was reaching out before his brain could stop him. Lance met him partway, twisting their fingers together and tugging until Keith was close enough to rest his chin on the top of Lance’s head.

    So he did. Like it was normal. And maybe it was.

    They watched Red together as she walked up and down a page on Neptune’s moons.

    “How’s it coming?” Lance said, quietly, like they were hiding in the library or like Red was sleeping and they didn’t want to wake her. “The essay.”

    “The gibberish was the best part,” Keith muttered.

    Lance huffed a laugh. “And you deleted it.”

    “And I deleted it.”

    “You should go to sleep.”

    Maybe.

    “Maybe,” Keith allowed.

    Lance squeezed his hand. “Not maybe. What if you go to practice tomorrow and get nailed in the face? Yikes.”

    “Yikes,” Keith echoed and hid his smile in Lance’s hair.

    “Don’t pee in my textbook, Red,” Lance pleaded.

    “You’re the one who put her there.”

    “I wanted to spend some quality time with my hamster-daughter.”

    Quality time. Keith watched Red cross the crease of the battered textbook’s spine, watched her drag her enormous hamster-butt onto a page on Saturn. Lance pulled away to reach for her and move her, her little feet twitching, back to Neptune. Keith rubbed his chin, feeling the fading warmth of Lance’s hair, and he thought: _quality time_.

    “We should spend some quality time together,” he decided.

    Lance twisted in his chair to look up at him. “We call that ‘dating.’”

    “Yeah,” Keith said, dragging it out. “When we go out and do stuff that’s called dating.”

    “What we’re doing _now_ is called dating.” Lance gestured between them. “This is a relationship. Which involves dating.”

    “It involves going _on_ dates.”

    “Hey,” Lance said, prodding Keith’s stomach. “Are you aware that you’re my boyfriend? And that _I_ am yours?”

    Keith smiled.

    Lance frowned. “That came out a little weird.”

    “I don’t think so.”

    “Ugh!” Lance stood and scooped Red back up. “You should go to sleep, you—weirdo.”

    “You need to sleep too, Lance.” Keith shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket and watched Lance set Red down in her cage. He was so delicate with her. Careful. Loving, really.

    Lance stayed crouched a moment longer than Keith thought was strictly necessary. “Maybe,” he muttered as he stood. Red waddled to her food dish and resumed eating. “I think I’ll study a little more.”

    “Are you worried?”

    “Uh, yeah.” Lance shrugged. “Exams are scary.”

    Keith breathed in. Keith breathed out. Something helpless and warm fluttered in his stomach. He reached out and took Lance’s hand again. “Let’s go to bed,” he said.

    Lance looked down at their hands. Keith watched the anxious struggle pass over his face, and then finally he said: “Yeah. Okay.”

    “Together,” Keith added, quickly, before his nerve could freeze and die. “Let’s go to bed together.”

    It took Lance long enough to reply that Keith knew—just _knew_ —his palms were getting sweaty and gross and definitely _not very nice to hold_. And then Lance looked up at him and said: “Oh.”

    Keith didn’t know what that meant.

“I don’t know what that means.”

Lance smiled, small and a little twitchy. “I guess it means ‘okay.’”

And okay seemed good enough.

They changed, facing away from each other and in silence like they had since day one. They went to the washroom and brushed their teeth side by side like they had a handful of times before. Keith watched Lance’s careful nighttime routine (“I feel a breakout coming,” Lance had muttered the day before. “Nobody wants that—trust me.”). Then, they walked back to their room together and Keith thought—again, and again, and again—about just _holding Lance’s damn hand_ but he kept his hands tense at his sides, fighting temptation for the seven steps it took to get—home.

Behind the safety of their door, doubt returned. They had slept together before—no, they had fallen asleep together before, crammed into one of the tiny, too-short beds. Keith already knew there was something lovely, loving, and warm about waking up together but he was discovering that there was something awkward and uncertain about going to bed together. He watched Lance say a “goodnight” to Red, watched Lance turn off their desk lamps and check that their window was closed against the late winter cold. He couldn’t see Lance turn but he thought he felt Lance look across the room at him.

”Come on,” Lance said eventually and the shadowy shape of him moved to Keith’s bed and Keith had a momentary image of Lance snuggling down in the blankets and stealing Keith’s one pillow.

He locked the door.

Climbing into bed was suddenly a ginger, thought-provoking process: where were his own legs? where were Lance’s? Something lurched in his stomach when he realized Lance had shoved himself against the wall, like he was conscious of the space Keith took up.

“Bed’s too small,” Keith muttered.

Lance snickered.

This time, Keith felt the lurch in his chest.

Lance laughed again when Keith climbed into bed, feeling both too big and too small.

”What?”

“Nothing—just—nervous.”

“Nervous.”

“Nervous!”

Keith brushed his fingers against Lance’s chin and frowned. “Come here.”

“Come _where_? The bed is too small, remember?”

“Just come on, Lance.”

Lance twisted a hand into Keith’s shirt and shuffled closer. Their knees knocked together.

“Are you holding your breath?” Lance whispered.

“I didn’t want to breathe on your face.”

Lance laughed again, light and high between them. Keith tried to kiss him but missed, pecking his nose clumsily. More laughter.

“Why is this so hard?”

Keith thought that there was something rude he could say to _that_ but he couldn’t remember what it was. He pulled the blanket over their shoulders and slipped his arm over Lance, feeling the shape of him in a way that was so distinctly non-sexual it was embarrassing.

“Your arm’s heavy,” Lance said. Keith could hear his smile.

“Just go to sleep.”

“Romantic.” Lance’s grip on his shirt tightened, then relaxed. “Goodnight, Keith.”

“Goodnight.” Keith huffed out a steadying breath. “Thank you for telling me about Blue.”

“You’re welcome?”

“It’s nice,” Keith muttered, maybe a little defensively. Lance’s laughter was warm against his face, his lips. Like the promise of a kiss, or something. “I like learning things about you.”

Lance reply was slow enough coming that Keith began to wonder if he had fallen asleep, if he was already dreaming about spring or the looming and unquestionable threat of exams. Sometimes, Keith dreamed about climbing mountains with Lance, about sharing pizza or cake, about yelling until Keith lost his voice.

“Keith,” Lance said, finally.

“Yeah?”

“ _This_ is quality time.”

Keith smiled. When he shifted forward, their noses brushed and he knew—just knew—that that would be new fodder for his dreams. “No. It’s sleep time.” This time, he didn’t miss and he marvelled at how easy it was to kiss Lance and he marvelled at the way Lance sighed against him, like it was easy to kiss Keith back, and he marvelled at the way Lance deflated under his arm and Lance’s hand flattened against his chest. A kiss became a hundred points of contact and, for the first time, Keith thought he could melt into this boy forever.

 

***

 

(They slept well. Lance’s eyes were a little brighter in the morning.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve got a big one i’m still working on and another smaller, fluffier one from after they move into their apartment so...look out for those????
> 
> title comes from one of several klance anthems: the last of the real ones by fall out boy 
> 
> thumbs up emoji
> 
> i’ve been in kind of weird place so this came out kind of weird, didn’t it?? BUT AT THE SAME TIME, this emotional bonfire of a series has been weirder so...


End file.
